`Good Signs` For Berwyn`s Mayor

February 22, 1985|By William Presecky.

If the display of campaign posters plastered to windows throughout Berwyn is any sign of voter sympathy in the Democratic mayoral primary fight there, Mayor Joseph Lanzillotti appears to have the nomination in hand.

But Roy Dames says he`s unimpressed. ``Signs don`t vote, people do,``

said Dames, a Berwyn Township official who is challenging Lanzillotti in a contest that has featured mudslinging and even bomb threats.

``I don`t care about signs,`` said Lanzillotti, who won the 1981 Democratic primary by a margin of more than 3 to 1. ``That doesn`t do anything to me either.``

Dames charges Lanzillotti with spending too much for too little. Lanzillotti defends his expenditures as necessary evils to mend the city`s fractured financial condition, which he inherited four years ago from the Democrats who are backing Dames.

``I`d like to see Berwyn get into the 20th Century and get a city manager working for us,`` Dames said. He said Lanzillotti has taken a $4 million deficit and turned it into $20 million of bonded indebtedness in four years.

``The last administration left me an inheritance--a $4 million deficit and a crumbling infrastructure,`` Lanzillotti said. ``We know what we got for our $20 million,`` he said, referring to the Rebuild Berwyn program undertaken last year to improve the 76-year-old suburb`s system of streets, sewers and water lines.

Lanzillotti, 57, is an attorney. He was Berwyn`s city prosecutor in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Dames, 40, is an administrative assistant to Cook County Medical Examiner Robert Stein. He was elected to the township board in 1976 and was elected assessor in 1980.

Dames` link with other Cook County employees, including Berwyn Township Democratic Committeeman Anton Lichner, a forest preserve district employee, has prompted Lanzillotti to charge his challenger with practicing ``Cook County politics at the gutter level.``

``Half the slate on the other side are double-dippers,`` Lanzillotti said.

Six of the 14 candidates on the Regular Democrats` slate work for Cook County.

The Regular Democrats have played up television and newspaper reports that Lanzillotti is suspected of understating city losses from a 1983 food and music festival and using his influence to dispose of hundreds of parking tickets for friends.

``They have no support for any of their allegations. Ours is a proven record of accomplishments,`` Lanzillotti said. He reiterated a threat he made last month to file a suit charging his detractors with slander.

The contest between Dames and Lanzillotti is further complicated by the fact that Democrats are going head to head in 15 other contests in Berwyn and Berwyn Township.